biography
Jill Dearman:
Writer, Teacher, Mystic, Woman-About-Town
Jill Dearman is represented by literary agent Janet Rosen of Sheree Bykofsky Associates, Inc.
Contact: JanetRosenBee@aol.com 212.244.3353
Jill Dearman was born and raised in Queens, New York. She received a B.A. from SUNY Purchase, where she studied film and writing.Her short fiction has been anthologized by Cleis Press. She is the 2006 winner of The Vera List Center Writing Award (First Place Prize for Fiction awarded by The Vera List Center for Art and Politics). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.
Her prose has been published or is forthcoming in New York Stories, North Atlantic Review, Lilith, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Nextbook,Thereby Hangs A Tale, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, The Portland Review and Constellation. As a journalist, her work has been published in New York Daily News, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly and numerous other publications. She has worked as an editorial consultant for Simon and Schuster, Gale Research and Silver Moon Press and other companies and publications.
In fall 2001, she was hired as a part-time faculty member in the Journalism Department of New York University. Since that time she has been teaching "The Art of Editing: From Copy Editing to Top Editing," a class she helped to develop. She also created and teaches two writing classes: "The Feature Article: Journalism of New York City" and "Critical Writing: the Arts in New York City." In addition, she has also taught a close reading course, under Francine Prose, in The New School's "Writing and Democracy" Program. Jill also tutors writing students at NYU's School of Professional and Continuing Studies.
Dearman is a professional writing coach, and has a large private clientele. She is putting together a writing book based on a series of highly popular workshops she conducts with established as well as up-and-coming writers in New York City.
Dearman is the curator of the Writers Room Reading Series at Cornelia Street Café in New York City. Previously, she served as curator of Dixon Place's Homotext Reading Series. She also served as a panelist for the 2006-7 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Awards, in the Nonfiction category. Dearman was also a judge in the Nonfiction category of the 2008 Publishing Triangle Awards.
A student and teacher of all things mystical, Dearman is also the author of Queer Astrology for Men and Queer Astrology for Women (St. Martins Griffin, 1999). These playful and insightful books were on numerous gay bestseller lists for years, and have been translated into French and Japanese. Dearman has written about astrology for Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, Stariq, Celebrity Living, HX, and Twist, and for five years wrote a nationally syndicated gay astrology column. Mademoiselle named her one of the country's top-ranking astrologers.
Throughout the 1990s Dearman worked as an HIV counselor and researcher for The New York City Department of Health AIDS Hotline and Gay Men's Health Crisis; she also volunteered for several years as a counselor at the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard of New York City.
She has also written and directed plays which have been produced at the Westbeth Theater Center, Performance Space 122, Nada, HERE, and other venues. Laurie Stone of The Village Voice called her a "risk-surfing playwright." Her short film, "The Great Bravura", was screened at several film festivals on the East Coast.
Pix: Jill and partner Anne and dreaming dog Roody; horseback riding
upstate; back on the tennis court after ACL surgery!
